4 Adding an dropbox account

The addon uses the OAuth 2.0 process for accessing your dropbox account. It means that you only have to login to dropbox once to get the authorization code for this addon. Each time the addon access your account this authorization code is used.
The authorization process:

The addon will get the Dropbox code and finish the authorization. When that is succesfull, your account information will retrieved and your account will appear as a list item. Select/click on your account name and you will see your files and folders from your Dropbox account.NOTE: this dropbox code has a limited lifetime, so don't wait too long with starting the addon again and finishing adding the account (step 6)!

5 The synchronizing service

This service is a one way synchronization only! From Dropbox to local. So: No files will be added/uploaded to Dropbox, which are added locally. No Dropbox items will be removed or changed when removed or changed locally (on a new new sync they will be put back).
Important: If you are on a platform, for which the native Dropbox Application is available, use that! That is a much better working, more stable and more safe than this service. This service has been created for the platforms which are not supported by Dropbox (like Raspbmc).
Check the official Dropbox site for their native Application.

5.1 Features

One way synchronization, from Dropbox to local.

Synchronizing each 5 to 1440 (24 hours) minutes

It will synchronize on 'rounded' time intervals. E.g.: When selecting 60 minutes, synchronization takes place ever whole hour (09:00, 10:00, and so on)

Synchronize all files/folders from your account or just select a folder from your account to synchronize

Access (using) the synchronized files/folders when browsing in the Dbmc add-on

(The files in the synchronized folder are not cached or streamed, but used from the local location.)

Instant synchronization when changes (delete, copy, move or uploaded) are made to the sync folder within the add-on.

6 Settings

From the Add-on settings menu you can:

General

Show relevant files only: When enabled, only pictures are shown when starting the addon from the Pictures menu, only music is shown when starting from the Music menu and only video when starting from the Video menu.

Location for cache files: You can define the location where the cached files (pictures (and thumbs), music and video) are stored.

Stream video and music: When enabled, video and music files will not be cached, but directly streamed (when viewing) from Dropbox.

Synchronization

These settings are moved to the account settings. Read next lines.

For each added dropbox account you can change the following settings (using the ContextMenu on selected the account):

Remove account: Removes the dropbox account from this add-on.

Change passcode...: Change/create a passcode to protect this account from unauthorized access. When changing the passcode settings you need to define the following settings:

Passcode: For added security, you can require a passcode (four-digit/password) to be entered any time the Dropbox addon is started. This way, you'll know your Dropbox is safe even if your Kodi is free accessable to others. Default there is no passcode (empty).

Passcode timeout is the time the entered passcode stays valid. If the time has passed, the passcode has to be re-entered.

Change synchronization...: Change/setup synchronizing a dropbox folder to a local folder. When enabled the synchronization of the selected Dropbox folder will be done in the background. When changing synchronization settings you need to define the following settings:

Interval: Set the time frequency when to do the synchronization.

Local folder: Select the location on Kodi where to synchronize the files/folders to.

Dropbox folder: Select the Dropbox folder to synchronize to Kodi.

7 Some things you need to know

The addon will default show a maximum of 200 items in a folder. If there are more, it will add an "Show me more..." item. If you select that, it will re-load with 400 items, and so on. This is done for performance reasons.

8 Caching or streaming media

Caching is storing media (and their thumbnails) to local storage. Streaming is directly playing the media from your dropbox account (Dropbox site).
The addon makes a distinction between pictures and video/music.

Video/Music: Default video/music is cached. But in the add-on settings menu there is a option to stream video and music media. When enabled, video and music media are not cached but directly streamed from your Dropbox account.

Pictures: Pictures can only be cached, because Dropbox doesn't support picture 'streaming'.

Note: When a folder is opened for the first time in the addon, the caching starts. So at first not all the files/thumbnails are available yet and thus Kodi will not display the files/thumbnails yet! Just wait a bit and you will see the thumbnails showing up. The addon first gets all the thumbnails, after that the media files are cached.

8.1 Location of the cached files

The cached files are stored per account in the <userdata>/addon_data/plugin.dbmc folder. These cached files are only removed when the account is removed from the addon or when a folder is removed within the dropbox account.